We’re not even paying close attention

Women – they’re old news, right? That battle was won long ago, right? No..

Bride burnings, honor killings, female infanticide, sex trafficking, mass rape as a weapon of war and many other hideous forms of violence against women are documented in a report released last month by the United Nations. The report, a compilation of many studies from around the world, should have been seen as the latest dispatch from that permanent world war — the war against women all over the planet. Instead, the news media greeted its shocking contents with a collective yawn.

Because…? The news media have other things to do? The subject isn’t important? Women don’t matter? Women deserve what they get? Those places are all far away and we’re fine over here? It’s too boring? We don’t care? We have to wash our hair that day?

The litany of serious abuses against women and girls can seem endless: child marriages, forced marriages, kidnapping and forced prostitution, sex slavery. According to the U.N. report, “A study in India estimated that prenatal sex selection and infanticide have accounted for half a million missing girls per year for the past two decades.”

Well, that will help; eventually there won’t be any women to rape or enslave or mutilate or beat up; problem solved.

Not only are we not doing enough to counter this wholesale destruction of the lives of so many women and girls, we’re not even paying close attention. There are women’s movements in even the smallest countries fighting against the violence and other forms of abuse. But they are underfunded and get very little support from those in a position to help…There was a time when activists cried out for our consciousness to be raised. It’s not too late. We can start by recognizing that the systematic subordination and brutalization of women and girls around the world is, in fact, occurring — and that we need to do something about it.

We’re not even paying close attention. When we do pay close attention, snappy observers like Wonkette rush to tell us we’re ‘fixated.’ What is that about? Why don’t we pay attention, why do people consider the subject beneath their notice? I don’t know, but let’s change that. Let’s do what Bob Herbert suggests and start by recognizing that the systematic subordination and brutalization of women and girls around the world is occurring and that we need to do something about it. Ladies, start your engines.

11 Responses to “We’re not even paying close attention”

Instead, the news media greeted its shocking contents with a collective yawn.

They yawned because it’s not news. It’s a broken record as far as the media are concerned.

Garrett Hardin did a great take on the boredom factor in connection with the population explosion crisis in his classic ‘Living within Limits’:

“Yesterday the Berlin Wall came down, and world population increased by a quarter of a million

Yesterday Lithuania declared its independence […] and world population increased by a quarter of a million

Yesterday an earthquake in Romaina claimed tens of thousands of lives and world population increased by a quarter of a million”

Hardin goes on to say:

“Chronic, time-extended happenings don’t have much of a chance when competing for time or space in the evening broadcast or the morning newspaper.”

That is clearly the case too with violence against women, though you overstate your case when you talk about a ‘war against women all over the planet’. Wars are events that men in greater numbers tend to kill and get killed in. Most of the world is a pretty brutal place for both sexes anyhow, and for most men life is probably as miserable as it is for most women tous comptes faits.

Cathal Copeland: “Garrett Hardin did a great take on the boredom factor in connection with the population explosion crisis in his classic ‘Living within Limits’: ‘Yesterday the Berlin Wall came down, and world population increased by a quarter of a million.'”

That might have something to do with the former (Berlin Wall coming down) being something that immediately changed many people’s lives (as well as signifying other things) while the latter (population growth) is only a *potential* problem if you accept certain assumptions.

I don’t think the collective yawn is necessarily because the subject is women: the western media tend to yawn about anything related to the ‘third world’, unless it has a direct effect on the west, of course.

If only they all wore the veil, for as we have been told by many enlightened and critical westerners such as Bunting and Bungawala, that protects women from the basest onslaughts of men. No hang on. A lot of then do wear veils… and still they get done over… what a muddle !

I’ve tended to guess that it’s at least in part about the depressing little fact that there seems always to be a market for young ladies who are willing to sell out women and feminism. “Tee-hee, boys! I’m not one of those shrill, nasty feminists! I’m perky and whip-smart, and I’m on your side!” *hip swivel* *hair toss* *twinkle*

I’m afraid I know this from personal experience — in my idiotic youth, I used to practice a sort of variation of it myself, the “Girliness? Ick!” variation. There’s a position that comes with immediate and straightforward benefits in the way of masculine attention. (At least, it does if you are slender, young, soft-voiced, and entirely unthreatening.) Eventually I had to face up to the fact that I was appealing pretty directly to sexism: my implication was that womanliness is icky, but I’m better than that. Blech.

Incidentally, I read Virginity or Death a few weeks ago, and I found it not so much strident as lively. It’s not exactly Off Our Backs, y’know.

I have to admit, I use girly as a (context-specific) pejorative myself (though never ever in Schwarzenegger mode, of men – men can be as girly as they like). But I also use macho the same way. I’m not sure I’m appealing to sexism when I do that (though I don’t say it to just anyone – I wouldn’t use it when talking to a known sexist), but I don’t think I am. It’s a rejection of hyper-whichever (female or male). It’s also often a self-rebuke – also often ironic…

It’s complicated.

And then of course since I’m almost unendurably threatening, indeed scary, it has a whole different resonance. I hope.

Point taken about “girly”, though I usually say “frilly” when I mean “the feminine equivalent of macho”. It’s complicated and shifty.

The pendulum has not exactly swung here; I’m still wearing my cozy flannel shirts, ripped up jeans, and hiking boots. (Grunge will never die, apparently, at least in my house.) It’s just… you know, there’s a posture one can adopt, or not. “Listen, boys, I’m not like those girls, always doing their nails and taking six hours to get ready and nattering on about nothing. I’m smart, like a guy! I like guy things! I dissect sharks and know what ‘TCP/IP’ means, but when I try to walk in heels, I fall over — I’m funny! No need to be threatened by me, no sirree. I’m a kicky tomboy! Hee! Gosh, you sure are a perceptive fella to see how attractive I am.” There’s one hell of a market for that.

It wasn’t particularly conscious on my part, but there it was.

It was when a creepy crushed-out guy took me aside and said, “You know, Cam, women are really stupid, but you, you’re different,” that I started to rethink this whole deal. In the process of verbally beating him to a pulp, I came to realize a few things myself.